Electricity is far cheaper, plus Texas is littered with former Bitcoin mine operations. I'm in this business (immersion cooling these things) and it isn't hard to transition from Bitcoin to GPU cards.

They buy in Dallas because they can get electricity for less than 4 cents per kwh. Probably some from behind the meter. That'll pay for a boatload of air conditioning.

Don't use motor oil; its dielectric strength is for shizzle. Get pharmaceutical grade white oil instead. There's no need for a filter in your system; rinse your equipment before dunking it and put a cover on your tank. Don't use a mechanical chiller; that's overkill, too expensive and too complicated. A single-loop dry cooler (basically a truck radiator with a box fan attached) will cool your oil well in 95% of the world. You want "hot" oil leaving your tank at about 60C and "cool" oil returning to your tank at about 35-40C.
  - Difficulty Level: I started one of the leading Immersion Cooling equipment suppliers.

I'm an old geek, and I've heard this discussion every decade since the 80s. Always comes down to the same thing, basically: forgiveness of failure. That breeds everything else.

Cooling by direct immersion in dielectric fluid doesn't use any water; it goes straight to an air/liquid heat exchanger.

I'm Engineered Fluids, manufacturer of the Immersion Cooling system. The owners of this DC are a church that got a big windfall donation a couple of years ago and invested it all in BitCoin mining. They're now picking up and moving to Paraguay, where I hear that they got a better deal on electricity in the Foz de Iguaçu region.

Not all dielectric heat transfer oils are fluorinated, and therefore as unfriendly to the ecology and to workers' health. The best are hydrocarbon based. I developed several different fluids that are being used in computer as well as other high powered electrical equipment (RF transmission, MRI equipment, high torque DC automotive motors, etc.) OptiCool Fluid by DSI Ventures, Inc., is one of these - it's more than 98% biodegradable in standard tests, nontoxic, nonhazardous and does not deplete the ozone layer like fluorinated fluids do. It's extremely stable and has good material compatibility. Plus, it's about 5 - 10% of the cost of fluorinated fluids.

I live in Brazil, where booth babes are a fixture at any trade show. My daughter has been one of them. She's in college, speaks three languages and looks fantastic in a short, tight dress. She gets paid several hundred dollars a night to engage prospective customers outside the booth and qualify them as to whether to bring them into the booths for the salespeople to work them over. Speaking three languages, she's in demand for this job - she's tired at the end of a show, but it's good money and she meets interesting people. She's not a prostitute - she knows that she's being ogled, but she's worked hard on her looks and is proud of them. She gets propositioned occasionally, but she's a big girl and can handle herself. Next year, she'll graduate with a degree in Chemistry from University Federal do Rio de Janeiro, one of the best universities in Brazil, and will go into pharmaceutical research. She's not being degraded - she goes into her job with her eyes open and feels like this is a heck of a lot better than other jobs that she could get.

Jesus, I'm glad I don't live where people debate this shit endlessly.

No - you're wrong (and how the heck did you get modded as "insightful"?).. I don't get uncomfortable because there are more fat people in the US. I do hate to sit next to some cow - even if he/she is what would be called "normal" in the midwest these days - on an airline. I'm not asking for first class armroom; I'm just asking that the person next to me doesn't spill over into my seat. I'm an older, big guy myself, but I'm fit, and I'd appreciate it if more people in the US made the effort, too.

And whaa, whaaa, whaaa, about being "bombarded" with unrealistic body images - if they had any real effect on the psyche of overweight people, then perhaps we overweight wouldn't be the new normal.

I live in South America and return frequently to the US. The first thing that I notice when I land in the US is how overweight people are. It's not that there aren't fat people in Brasil, Argentina and Chile; it's just that it's not the norm.

That may have been their goal - to market to people who are willing to pay more for a product that works better - but both of the Apple products that I've bought have not worked nearly as well as their competition. The PPC laptop I bought in 1992 crashed several times a day - I went back to Windows 98 for its stability! The iPhone that I have doesn't like the fact that I took it out of the US to use. It constantly complains. Its battery is weak and I can't even change the darn thing. My experience is that Apple products DON"T live up to their promise of 'just works'.

I always told the team "I'll be in my office if I can help you in any way", and then went back to my office and watch some porn.

That's just the way I roll...

Here in Brasil, we have the "US model" of subsidized phones and contracts for the more expensive phones (cheaper phones don't have contracts, but are still subsidized - it's just that the service itself is so darned expensive that the carriers get paid back for the handset).

But I buy new, unlocked hardware on Ebay and bring it to Brasil, where it works fine. Why don't people in the US do that? Buy what you want and use it where you want it. Sure, you'll fork out $300 - $600 for a new smartphone, but it would quit all the bitching about being locked to AT&T, etc. Is it just laziness and inertia?

Try using your iPhone in a country where it wasn't originally sold. Then you'll see the value of jailbreaking - and learn what a pain the Apple lockdown process is. Every time I update the firmware, the thing tries to re-lock onto AT&T (the nearest AT&T tower is about 6000 miles away, I reckon). If I want American apps (I'm American), then I have to jailbreak the thing, or buy a shitload of iTunes cards when I'm in the states.

I like the phone's functionality, but I'm seriously considering buying another piece of hardware to get away from Apple's lockdown. Oh, and iTunes sucks on my computer.